Velvel on National Affairs

This progressive blog sets forth the personal views of the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law on national events. Occasionally, the responses to his views or other interesting articles are also posted.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Re: Michael Mukasey And Jewish Conservatism.

December 14, 2007

Re: Michael Mukasey And Jewish Conservatism.

Dear Colleagues:

I shall write relatively briefly today on a matter which touches a subject I’ve long, but perhaps wrongly, considered sensitive. The sensitive subject is the turn of American Jews toward conservatism. The matter relating to this is Michael Mukasey on waterboarding.

The overall subject has in recent years been sensitive, I’ve thought, because so many of the neocons who brought us the Iraq war were Jewish. The men at the very top weren’t: bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld. But several people just below, or with influence, were: Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Perle, William Kristol. To bring up the American Jewish turn toward conservatism in such circumstances seemed to me likely to simply fan the ever present, if often banked, fires of anti-Semitism, fires which have certainly not been diminished by the leftish view that Israel is responsible for our problems. Yet recently, when my views toward Mukasey began boiling over to the point that I have felt a need to do a radio show on the question of Jewish conservatism, and have begun reading materials on the subject in preparation, I found that there is a perhaps surprising amount of writing on the subject. So maybe it is not as sensitive as I thought. Or, if it is, people have decided to write about it regardless.

At present, I have not yet read widely enough to feel reasonably educated in the premises. My views largely still stem from growing up in the home of Russian Jewish immigrants who had a strong belief in social justice and great sympathy for labor (even though a union was more than a little responsible for the destruction of my old man’s small business). My folks, before I was born, had themselves been part of the laboring class for a reasonable period, my mother a milliner and my father a laundryman. I grew up with certain values, obtained from them, from their friends, who had similar or identical backgrounds, from reading, and from the fact that people of their stripe invariably voted for the Democrats -- for FDR and Truman -- and favored what the New Deal was trying to accomplish.

It always seemed to me, quite wrongly and very naively I’m now sure, that several of the inculcated values were necessarily ones which stemmed from a Russian Jewish, semi socialistic background. But in later years I came to believe that several of the values I hold dear are, to a very major extent, signposts as well of the Protestant rural America of the 1800s and well into the mid 20th century, of the working class of all racial and ethnic groups, of Scandinavian American Midwest culture, of much Asian American culture, and others. I am speaking here of values such as hard work, modesty, honesty and a sense of fairness to others. The only group, as it were, that one might think gravely lacking in such attributes is, sad to say, the group which controls America today: the white collar class in business, the professions and government.

I am, of course, not praising or indicting every member of any of the aforementioned groups or others, but am speaking in broad generalities that I think cannot be readily dismissed as obviously incorrect.

Which brings me to Michael Mukasey. Mukasey is Jewish -- he even went to an Orthodox Jewish (if possibly modern) prep school. He belongs to a people that often has been viciously persecuted for 1,500 or 2,000 years. They have been slaughtered, tortured and dispossessed, time and time again. Long before Hitler there was the Spanish Inquisition -- which used waterboarding (and may even have invented it). Coming from this background, and growing up in a period (the 1940s and 1950s) when the human (and humane) attitudes of the general Jewish community favored social justice (as indicated by overwhelming support for FDR and Truman), Michael Mukasey nevertheless does not know if waterboarding is torture? The son of a bitch cannot bring himself to say that a technique used in a Spanish war against his own people, a technique considered torture for 500 years, is torture? I imagine it must be my background, as described earlier, but I just cannot understand how someone who comes out of Mukasey’s background can say what he has been saying. I can understand it when some crumb from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page tells me in emails that we are not doing torture, or when a lying bum like George Bush claims it. But a Jewish guy who even went to a Jewish religious school? -- he claims it is possible that waterboarding is not torture? This is just too much for my poor mind to grasp. I cannot grasp it even if one were to say Mukasey has acted out of ambition to become Attorney General. It seems to me like a desertion of the most basic human values that a Jewish guy from New York City, and from a religious prep school no less, must have been exposed to all the time.

And it brings up the broader question I adverted to earlier, the question I am in process of reading about. How is it, and why is it, that so many Jews have become so conservative? What are all the reasons? And this implicates another, conceivably even broader question. How is it and why is it that so many American of all creeds, faiths and types -- Americans, for God’s sake -- have come to accept torture as just one of those things?

Maybe, though, I am to some extent focusing through the wrong end of the telescope. Maybe the focus should be on the fact that so many Americans of all faiths, creeds and types never accepted torture, and an increasing number of them seem to be rejecting torture as time moves on. Yet, if that is true, it only causes me to wonder the more about a guy like Mukasey and about the wing of conservative, even neocon, Jews whom he may represent.*

*This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to comment on the post, on the general topic of the post, or on the comments of others, you can, if you wish, post your comment on my website, VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com. All comments, of course, represent the views of their writers, not the views of Lawrence R. Velvel or of the Massachusetts School of Law. If you wish your comment to remain private, you can email me at Velvel@mslaw.edu.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. The podcasts can also be found on iTunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

In addition, one hour long television book shows, shown on Comcast, on which Dean Velvel, interviews an author, one hour long television panel shows, also shown on Comcast, on which other MSL personnel interview experts about important subjects, conferences on historical and other important subjects held at MSL, presentations by authors who discuss their books at MSL, a radio program (What The Media Won’t Tell You) which is heard on the World Radio Network (which is on Sirrus and other outlets in the U.S.), and an MSL journal of important issues called The Long Term View, can all be accessed on the internet, including by video and audio. For TV shows go to: www.mslaw.edu/about_tv.htm; for book talks go to: www.notedauthors.com; for conferences go to: www.mslawevents.com; for The Long Term View go to: www.mslaw.edu/about¬_LTV.htm; and for the radio program go to: www.velvelonmedia.com.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Re: Robert Novak’s “Prince of Darkness.”

December 12, 2007

Re: Robert Novak’s “Prince of Darkness.”

Dear Colleagues:

About thirty-five years ago or so, I stopped reading Evans’ and Novak’s’ columns. They were just too reactionary for me. Reading their stuff was like forcing oneself to read the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. Yuck. I guess the last straw for me might have been when I realized that George McGovern could not possibly win the 1972 race because Evans and Novak would not let him win. They won. He lost. The rest of us lost too, since we got Nixon again. To reiterate, yuck.

Nor did I ever watch Evans or Novak on television. Their shows had just too much yelling and screaming and knee jerkism on each side to suit me. Once again, yuck.

So, when Novak came out with his autobiography, (the aptly named) Prince Of Darkness, there was no way I was going to buy that book and provide this guy with even one red cent of royalties. But then I saw him on television discussing his book, and the book sounded pretty interesting even if Novak is reactionary. I still didn’t buy the book, though. Then I saw him on TV a second time discussing the book, and again it sounded very interesting. So I broke down and bought the book, and have now read it.

Prince of Darkness is not a great book. It is not filled with unusual insights. It is basically, in my judgment, a series of vignettes, hundreds of them, about people who usually were famous in my lifetime, or, if not famous, at least politically active. Fifty or 100 years from now, maybe even only five or ten years from now, or even two years from now, nobody will remember the book, since it is, as said, basically only a collection of brief vignettes about the famous or the politically active. Thucydides or Lytton Strachey, Novak isn’t.

Yet, for some of us who were politically aware from the 1950s onward, the book is interesting, and for precisely the same reason it will not be remembered: it is filled with stories about the people of our time. Many of the stories, and/or the Novakian views they illustrate or call forth, have been described in book reviews. The reviews of Novak’s book may be more thorough, more what book reviews should be, than most are. So there is no need to reiterate the vignettes or views here, at least not most of them.

The only comment Novak made which I guarantee -- like George Foreman, I guarantee it -- has not been picked up elsewhere is his statement that his uncle, Sid Novak, was a legendary Chicago High School basketball coach. This interested me because I still regard Chicago, and Illinois, high school basketball of the mid 1950s as among the most important aspects of world history, and my memory of the name Sid Novak was very vague at best and of where he coached -- the name Crane Tech somehow came to mind -- was even vaguer. So I emailed Ira Berkow, who frankly must know everything that is or is not worth knowing on this and many other subjects, to ask him about Sid Novak. The word came back from Ira that Sid Novak was a legend and he had been at Crane Tech. I’ve now asked Ira why Novak was a legend -- did he win endless championships like Morgan Wooten at DeMatha in the Washington, D.C. area? -- and am awaiting Ira’s reply.

Other than the comment about his uncle Sid -- which was probably of no interest to any other reader -- I was taken with the fact that Novak goes out of his way to say what a horrible guy he himself is. He admits repeatedly, he in fact proclaims, that he is very dislikable, is a former big time drunk, is a guy with a serious gambling problem, is a man who at times lied to his partner, who in turn lied at times to him or withheld important information from him, is a man who lied to some others too, is a guy who got into physical fights -- brawls, is obsessed with money (one good thing he does, though, is that he translates amounts of money he received for various things in former years (e.g., the early 1960s) into their equivalents today, which gives one a sense of the realistic magnitudes he is speaking about and should be done by other writers), and is to the right of Genghis Khan. Never has a person written so extensively on what a bad person he himself is, as far as I know. As Churchill might put it, never have so few written so much that is so bad about such a small number. Novak deserves some credit for this, one imagines. If nothing else, it shows at least some self awareness, even if the self awareness never caused him to change.

Since he is appropriately hard on himself, I suppose Novak is entitled, as it were, to level the continuous blasts he directs at others. There are so many political, governmental and journalistic figures of the last 50 years whom he regards as liars, hypocrites, stupid, money hungry (a fine trait that, if memory serves, he thinks began to become a big time phenomenon in the 1960s, which is not far from when this writer would place it), big mouths, drunks, dullards, backstabbers, and general all around schmucks. To me, his views on the political class -- which Twain called our only native criminal class -- and the journalistic class seem right on. (With regard to their being general all around schmucks, one has to laugh at a story Novak tells about John McLaughlin, whom Novak thinks a world class putz whom he “came to loathe.” Not wanting to waste a single moment waiting for a limo when he returned to Washington via air, McLaughlin would have a flunkie awaiting him at the arrival gate. When the flunkie spotted McLaughlin, “he would notify a colleague driving the limo via mobile phone: ‘The eagle has landed! The eagle has landed!’” Can you believe it? “The eagle has landed!” If memory serves, that statement is what was radioed back when the lunar lander touched down on the moon.)

A few nights ago, I heard Lou Dobbs say on TV, when recently interviewed extensively at the Princeton Club in New York City, that Americans do not want to vote for any of the people who currently are running for president. One thinks Dobbs right, and when you read Novak’s book you might also think that, in a system which is comprised so extensively, even almost exclusively, of the kinds of despicables whom Novak finds everywhere in Washington and the state capitols, such a horrible choice as we now have is only to be expected.

One of the interesting things all this brings up is why, since he finds so many and so much to be so horrid, Novak made his life living among, socializing with and writing about such awful people and things. Well, it was generally a pretty good living. It is what he knows how to do. He plainly loves a good fight. He got to live and work among, and sometimes affect, the high and mighty of the world. And, one suspects, he is simply the moth drawn to the flame. This last, indeed, is probably the most important, the overarching reason. But whatever the reason or reasons, I suspect we should be glad that he did it and could therefore write his book. For the book so vigorously debunks so many who, as lots of us feel, richly deserve all the debunking that any and all can offer.

___________________________ This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to comment on the post, on the general topic of the post, or on the comments of others, you can, if you wish, post your comment on my website, VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com. All comments, of course, represent the views of their writers, not the views of Lawrence R. Velvel or of the Massachusetts School of Law. If you wish your comment to remain private, you can email me at Velvel@mslaw.edu.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. The podcasts can also be found on iTunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

In addition, one hour long television book shows, shown on Comcast, on which Dean Velvel, interviews an author, one hour long television panel shows, also shown on Comcast, on which other MSL personnel interview experts about important subjects, conferences on historical and other important subjects held at MSL, presentations by authors who discuss their books at MSL, a radio program (What The Media Won’t Tell You) which is heard on the World Radio Network (which is on Sirrus and other outlets in the U.S.), and an MSL journal of important issues called The Long Term View, can all be accessed on the internet, including by video and audio. For TV shows go to: www.mslaw.edu/about_tv.htm; for book talks go to: www.notedauthors.com; for conferences go to: www.mslawevents.com; for The Long Term View go to: www.mslaw.edu/about¬_LTV.htm; and for the radio program go to: www.velvelonmedia.com.

Monday, December 03, 2007

Re: Arthur Sulzberger And Bill Keller On Bended Knee, Serf-Like.

December 3, 2007

Re: Arthur Sulzberger And Bill Keller On Bended Knee, Serf-Like.

Dear Colleagues:

From time to time The New York Times (how “alliterative,” so to speak, is that?) has been strongly criticized here for failing to report very important stories that it knew about, often that it knew a lot about. The Times has explicitly admitted to doing this; sometimes the admission has been that a newly disclosed story had been withheld, and sometimes the admission has been that still other, still undisclosed stories have been withheld.

The failure to disclose stories has usually occurred at the behest of the Executive; it tells the Times -- which bends the knee, serflike -- that national security would be compromised by disclosure. The most horrid example of this I know of is the Times more-than-one-year, bended-knee withholding of the story of the NSA’s spying. This story was initially ready to go in October, 2004, before the November presidential election. Publication could very conceivably have changed the results of that election -- we’ll never know that it wouldn’t have, will we? -- and spared us a second four years of the President who is the second worst disaster in American history (after only James Buchanan (1856-1860)). So the Times contributed greatly to getting us into the Iraq disaster in the first place by its credulous reporting on WMDs, its buy-the-Administration-line-of-bovine-defecation hook, line and sinker reporting on WMDs, and it then helped keep us in that disaster via contributing to Bush’s 2004 victory by kowtowing to Administration claims and withholding the story of the NSA spying.

It has been suggested here that such a record is ample ground to give the gate to the Times’ publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, who is publisher by inheritance, not by demonstrated competence, and, even more particularly, to the Times’ editor, Bill Keller, who, though a wonderful writer, has nonetheless presided over these editorial misjudgments of monumental, of historic, character. Of course, illustrating those two American truisms that nothing succeeds like failure (as proven regularly by university presidents, football coaches, and baseball managers, who all get job after job yet perform badly every time, and that none of the big cheeses care a whit for anything said by the small fry of this society (as proven every day by the politicians, especially the Democrat leadership in Congress, while the Times itself, and the rest of the mainstream media prove everyday that they are sycophants to the rich and powerful, as when they report what George Bush had for dinner -- nobody in authority has paid the least attention to the idea that people like Sulzberger and Keller, who are responsible for journalistic disaster, and partly for national disaster, should be replaced. Like other big deals, Sulzberger and Keller are above their horrid mistakes.

One marvels that the newspaper’s powers that be still accede to the Executive’s bovine excrement. Before the disastrous withholding of the NSA story, there was the disastrous withholding of the story of the impending, disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, there was attempted Executive suppression of publication of that encyclopedia of Executive misdeeds known as the Pentagon Papers, and there were efforts to smother and hide knowledge of the multiple crimes called Watergate. But the Times, like most Americans, seems to abjure history and thus to never learn. So it is that we again learn that it has withheld yet another story at the Executive’s request: for over three years, it admitted on November 18th, it has sat on the story of American help to Pakistan in securing its nuclear materials against unauthorized use or (further) unauthorized transfer. It admitted that some of the persons who told it about the program were “concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable,” but it bent the knee, serflike, to “a request from the Bush Administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.” Here are pertinent excerpts from the November 18th article on efforts to secure the weapons (emphases added):

The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.

Since then, some elements of the program have been discussed in the Pakistani news media and in a presentation late last year by the leader of Pakistan’s nuclear safety effort, Lt. Gen Khalid Kidwai, who acknowledged receiving “international” help as he sought to assure Washington that all of the holes in Pakistan’s nuclear security infrastructure had been sealed.

The Times told the administration last week that it was re-opening its examination of the program in light of those disclosures and the current instability in Pakistan. Early this week, the White House withdrew its request that publication be withheld, though it was unwilling to discuss details of the program.

* * * * *

Still, the Pakistani government’s reluctance to provide access has limited efforts to assess the situation. In particular, some American experts say they have less ability to look into the nuclear laboratories where highly enriched uranium is produced -- including the laboratory named for Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who sold Pakistan’s nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

* * * * *

But while Pakistan is formally considered a “major non-NATO ally,” the program has been hindered by a deep suspicion among Pakistan’s military that the secret goal of the United States was to gather intelligence about how to locate and, if necessary, disable Pakistan’s arsenal which is the pride of the country.

“Everything has taken far longer than it should,” a former official involved in the program said in a recent interview, “and you are never sure what you really accomplished.”

* * * * *

But a legal analysis found that aiding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program – even if it was just a protective gear – would violate both international and American law.

* * * * *

A potential impediment to such sharing was the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which bars cooperation between nations on weapons technology.

Now it is pretty clear that the American people should have known about this effort because our interests are obviously involved if Pakistan’s nukes are not secure. But we are not told why secrecy was necessary lest “premature disclosure . . . hurt the effort to secure the weapons,” and no obvious or overriding reason presents itself to this writer’s mind.

On the contrary, perhaps public knowledge would have led to greater public and congressional pressure to do even more and to do it faster. This is especially so because there are a lot of people who have thought that the Pakistani political situation is not just currently unstable but has long been a disaster-in-waiting, and because some “American officials and nuclear experts . . . were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable.” As well, had the public and Congress known of the matter, maybe Congress would have removed the impediments of American law, and/or maybe smart nongovernmental lawyers would have given the public and Congress reasons why domestic and international law did not stop us from aiding in securing the Pakistani weapons. The Times’ own article points out that such legal impediments were able to be circumvented in the past with regard to various other countries, and one would bet the same could have been done here. The secrecy smacks a lot more of the current Executive’s penchant for secrecy whenever possible than of true legal impedimenta. By bending the knee, the Times may have made the situation worse than it need have been.

This possibility is further advanced by a front page Wall Street Journal attitude of November 29th, eleven days after the Times broke the story. (The Journal did not say it had been sitting on the story, so one assumes -- rightly? -- that it learned of it from the Times’ article and then began its own investigation.) The Journal said that the Pakis (as the Brits call them) are particularly concerned about fervid Muslim fundamentalists who have “‘extreme thoughts’” or “are inclined to force their religious beliefs upon others.” The threat is increasingly pronounced because of “a rising tide of young people inclined to be more religiously conservative -- and spurred by the U.S. led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, more anti-American. That includes the college campuses that are most likely to supply recruits to the nuclear program. ‘You can improve physical security by building high walls and establishing a well-guarded perimeter. It’s much harder to defend against insiders,’” says Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a former assistant secretary of state for weapons and nonproliferation . . . . “Critics say religious conservatism gripping the applicant pool makes it too difficult to discern potentially dangerous zealots. ‘It’s a source of worry that the secret institutions are seized with religious fervor,’ says Pervez Hoodbhoy, chairman of the physics department at Quaid-e-Azam University, a large source of scientists for Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Moreover, the Journal says that “In late 2001, acting on tips from U.S. intelligence, Pakistan detained two of its retired nuclear scientists who had met with members of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, including Mr. bin Laden.” One, “who remains under house arrest, had sketched a rough diagram of a nuclear bomb for Mr. bin Laden . . .” although “Pakistan intelligence agents later described the drawing as absurdly basic.” (How they know that to definitely be true is not disclosed.)

As well, the Journal says that “Pakistan’s hardline Islamic parties have vigorously promoted the nation’s nuclear program as a way for Muslim countries to combat American hegemony -- and don’t share the government’s concern about the kind of security lapses that alarm the U.S. . . . At Quaid-e-Azam University, the nuclear critic Mr. Hoodbhoy says his students are more radical than a previous generation. They have come up through an education system that increasingly stresses Islamic ritual and came of age in a charged political environment. There’s widespread sympathy for those fighting Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, he adds, although most wouldn’t want to live under a Taliban-like regime.”

Now, all of this is enough to worry any American, and presumably could have been learned and become a subject of discussion in America a long time ago had the Times not bent the knee and withheld the story for three years. The information casts further doubt on George Bush’s misadventure in Iraq, which is fueling the problem, and could even cause one to say, if one wishes, that we went after the wrong enemies entirely when we went into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we should stop those disasters before middle easterners turn even more against us. Or maybe one should say that the real enemies, and the truly dangerous ones, are people the imbecile in the White House and his worse-than-that Vice President choose to call allies. I really don’t know. What I do believe, however, is that the problem of nukes in Pakiland is a big one, and our efforts to see that they are secured against misuse is something that should have been under public discussion for a long time, and could have been under public and Congressional discussion for awhile had the Times not bent the knee yet again to King George and his minions.

As well, the latest disclosure of Art and Bill on bended knee raises another question which has been asked here before. What other stories is the Times sitting on instead of disclosing, and how important are they to the safety and well being of this country? Nobody seems to be asking this question, let alone applying pressure for the Times -- in the absence of re-examination which confirms overriding reasons for secrecy -- to reveal what it knows about matters that are secret from the rest of us. Isn’t it high time [no pun intended] that writers began to raise questions about the Times’ penchant for secrecy, and began to bring pressure for disclosures of matters currently hidden from the public and thereby immunized from discussion? Doesn’t history indicate that raising questions and bringing pressure about this would be wise?*

___________________* This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to comment on the post, on the general topic of the post, or on the comments of others, you can, if you wish, post your comment on my website, VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com. All comments, of course, represent the views of their writers, not the views of Lawrence R. Velvel or of the Massachusetts School of Law. If you wish your comment to remain private, you can email me at Velvel@mslaw.edu.

VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page. The podcasts can also be found on iTunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com

In addition, one hour long television book shows, shown on Comcast, on which Dean Velvel, interviews an author, one hour long television panel shows, also shown on Comcast, on which other MSL personnel interview experts about important subjects, conferences on historical and other important subjects held at MSL, presentations by authors who discuss their books at MSL, a radio program (What The Media Won’t Tell You) which is heard on the World Radio Network (which is on Sirrus and other outlets in the U.S.), and an MSL journal of important issues called The Long Term View, can all be accessed on the internet, including by video and audio. For TV shows go to: www.mslaw.edu/about_tv.htm; for book talks go to: www.notedauthors.com; for conferences go to: www.mslawevents.com; for The Long Term View go to: www.mslaw.edu/about¬_LTV.htm; and for the radio program go to: www.velvelonmedia.com.

About Dean Velvel

Name:Lawrence
Velvel

Location:Andover, Massachusetts,
United States

Dean Velvel, an honors graduate of
the University of Michigan Law School, has practiced law in the public and private sectors,
and been a law professor. He is the author of the quartet Thine Alabaster Cities
Gleam. The books in the quartet are entitled: Misfits In America, Trail of
Tears, The Hopes and Fears of Future Years: Loss and Creation, and The Hopes
and Fears of Future Years: Defeat and Victory.

MSL's mission is to provide high quality, practical and affordable legal education to
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